Religion Journal: The Making of Delhi’s Lotus Temple

Built 25 years ago, Delhi’s Lotus Temple attracts huge number of visitors. The tourist figures put the building on a par with the Taj Mahal in terms of popularity.

India is losing the spiritual qualities that enabled the Lotus Temple in Delhi to be built, according to the architect who designed what is now one of the nation’s most visited places of prayer.

Fariborz Sahba completed the Lotus Temple, a Baha’i House of Worship near Nehru Place, 25 years ago. In the years since, the extraordinary 27-leaved structure has become a nationally recognized symbol of India and its reverence for religion.

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Mr. Sahba says laborers on the project worked with a “devotion and sincerity” that he hasn’t witnessed anywhere else in the world.

But the architect believes that the growth of the competitive economy, a rise in materialism and technological advances in India mean it would be harder to build the iconic temple here now.

“Today it would be more complicated because India has moved towards the same direction that [the] United States is moving towards, more commercially driven technology,” Mr. Sahba said.

“I think [the] more we become commercial and competitive and more materialistic, we lose some of the qualities that built this building,” he added.

Developed nations and their religious leaders have long agonized over the impact of materialism and consumerism on society. In the early 1990s, booming economies in Southeast Asia became anxious about the negative effects of a dependence on labor saving devices. The Malaysian government, which had experienced similar levels of economic growth to those of modern-day India, commissioned studies into the influence of materialism on the country’s youth. It concluded that high percentages used drugs, gambled or watched pornographic videos as a way to escape boredom.

Diminishing interest in religion and its buildings as places of worship is often cited as the result of an increased reliance on material wealth for well-being and protection. Rampant consumerism, commercialization, and the rapid advance of technology are also blamed for shortened attention spans, an exclusive focus on financial gain, and the loss of traditional skills.

Mr. Sahba said that 30 years ago in India he was able to find the attributes and attitudes necessary to build the Lotus Temple.

“I could see in the eyes of my colleagues and friends who saw my preliminary design, excitement and a connection,” the Iranian-born Canadian architect said. ”You could feel reverence and the respect that the workers had for the building at the time of construction. That was very unique.”

Mr. Sahba believes it would have been impossible to build the Lotus Temple in the U.S. or Europe.

“Only in India could I get 400 carpenters to work six years with that kind of sincerity, that kind of devotion and respect for the building, because in the West you would have used technology that would have made the building very industrial,” he said during a phone interview from California.

Work carried out by laborers who used “primitive technology” and who were aware of the spiritual significance of the building, made the Lotus Temple what it is, according to its designer.

“Because of this spirituality, there is a real elegance in the building, which is so feminine,” Mr. Sahba says.

The temple was built at “the right time and the right place,” says the 63-year-old architect, who also lectures at Princeton and Yale.

The Lotus Temple had its 25th anniversary last December and next year the Baha’i faith will be 150 years old. Baha’u'llah founded Baha’ism in Persia in 1863. He subsequently sent teachers of the faith to India, as an Indian was among the first 18 disciples.

India is now home to the world’s largest population of Baha’is, with one in three of the religion’s six million followers living in the country. A strong focus on equality and social action are two of the key tenants of the faith.

The Lotus Temple was the world’s seventh Baha’i House of Worship. The first was built in Chicago in 1912 and the eighth is currently being contracted for Chile’s capital Santiago. It will be the first in South America.

The Indian construction was the world’s largest and most advanced shell structure when it was built. Mr. Sahba also designed the visitor center, as well as the gardens at the Baha’i House of Worship in Haifa, Israel.

Shatru-Ghun Jiwani, the Lotus Temple’s director of public information, agrees with Mr. Sabha’s views on consumerism in India, describing it as “unbridled.”

“It’s distorting reality, it’s making man forget that he is both spiritual and material,” he said in a recent interview at the temple’s visitor center.

“Baha’u'llah compares humanity to a bird with two wings. One is spiritual one is material and both must be equal for the bird to take flight.”

Nevertheless, visitor numbers to the temple continue to soar, with around five million coming in 2011, up from between three and four million in recent years, according to temple officials. The figures put the building, which is free to enter, on a par with the Taj Mahal in terms of popularity. Officials at the Agra monument said it received 5.3 million visitors in 2011.

Mr. Jiwani credits the arrival of the metro at nearby Kalkaji Mandir. “There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for such a jump.” There is no official numbering system at the temple but volunteers keep a head count.

Vijay Kumar, who has worked as head of security at the temple since it opened in 1986, said it is becoming more of a tourist attraction each year.

“We built this as a place of prayer and meditation but people use it for tourism,” Mr. Kumar said.

Inside the temple, Baha’i teachings and Buddhist scriptures are recited in regular prayer sessions along with extracts from the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Bible.

Mr. Kumar also agreed with the architect that it would be more difficult to get such a project going in India today, but puts that down to corruption. “In India it’s a big hassle to get permission to build a temple, you have to grease the palms even if it’s a public building,” he said.

Joanna Sugden is freelance journalist living in Delhi. Before coming to India in 2011 she spent four-and-a-half years as a reporter at The Times of London, covering religion and education. You can follow her on Twitter @jhsugden.

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